JANG Communication

Customize your authoring environment

One of the great advantages of FrameMaker is that it can easily be adapted to your needs. Apart from the many settings that can be customized, there are various scripting options and an extensive FrameMaker Development Kit. Over the decades, many developers have created plug-ins that add vital functionality to the standard FrameMaker product.

Putting these tools to use requires insight in the native behavior of FrameMaker as well as thorough working knowledge of the plug-ins and scripting environments. Using a combination of customization, automation and existing plug-in functionality, tailor-made solutions can be created for almost every situation.

What you get is what you need

With tailor-made solutions, the end result is a set of tools that fit your documentation team like a glove. In contrast to standard products, you do not pay for a whole bunch of features that you do not need. And with FrameMaker as a sound and versatile basis and access to all the scripting source code and customization settings, you do not make yourself depending on a specific vendor or consultant.

Do you have to use DITA tools to become more productive ?

One of the current buzz words in the documentation world is DITA. But while the basic ideas behind the DITA standard are sound and should be applied in all documentation, the implementation of a DITA solution is still an area of heavy debate. Many DITA consultants will tell you that FrameMaker is dead and everyone should use XML editors and commandline tools.

My own take on this issue is that a perfect solution does not take your documentation team completely out of their known territorium and comfort zone. Yes, there will be big changes for authors who have no prior knowledge of reuse techniques. But it is perfectly possible to create a DITA-inspired solution without having to introduce the kinds of tools that software geeks seem to love, but that scare away most of the technical authors I have met in my career.